


The Unwilling King

by Avy36



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, King Kíli, kili - Freeform, post-BotFA, tauriel - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3103589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avy36/pseuds/Avy36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kili feels like he's lost everyone. Thorin and Fili died weeks ago in the legendary Battle of the Five Armies, and now Kili is King. Wearing a heavy crown that he never wanted and sitting on a throne he never wished for. He wanders the halls of Erebor in a stupor of grief, and that's where Tauriel finds him.</p><p>Warning - extremely unhappy Kili.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unwilling King

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this right after DoS came out and never got around to posting it, so when I went to see BotFA (when I got over my mourning period, of course) I figured I may as well fine-tune the details and finish it up. 
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr for LotR/The Hobbit things - http://firemoonsandstarlight.tumblr.com/

He still sees their faces. Down here, in the cold, dank halls of his forefathers, he still sees them as clear as if they were standing right in front of him. It’s the highest form of irony - these halls were ever-present in the stories of his childhood. They were meant to be filled with light. Warm fires. Songs of victory. Now all Kili sees as he wanders the wide rooms… all he sees are ghosts. Thousands died in the Battle of the Five Armies. It was supposed to be glorious - this unheard of alliance between races that had been foes throughout the ages. It was, he supposed, to begin with. Glorious and a legend in the making. Instead, all Kili remembers, as he sits against a cold stone wall in some remote hall he doesn't even recall entering, is a massacre. He barely remembers the end of the battle. Exhausted, broken, numb with cold and too much pain inflicted within such a short time. It’s a blur, shooting down Orc after Orc and slaying foes for hours on end. All he remembers is the blood in his eyes and the sweat on his brow. A small part of his mind creeps up to remind him that no, he remembers more, and he fights to push it away. Shaking hands cover his eyes as he starts to hear them again - Azog the Defiler spitting out words of hate across the ice, Fili’s broken body falling heavily to the ground right in front of him. Everything goes black after that. …

He failed his uncle too. He tried so hard to save them. He fought, his aim true as he struggled to stay conscious in time to get to Fili, only to have his body betray him before he could get close enough. In the dark halls of Erebor, Kili stumbles. His hands shake all the time now, his eyes are wild. His head throbs still, and he reaches a hand up as the pain causes his vision to swim. He’s a mess. He’s a disaster. He’s many things now, but there is one thing he isn’t… he isn’t a King. The trouble is that’s what he is now. Kili, Son of Dis. The first of his name, and King Under the Mountain. Years of knowing Thorin and his brother were ahead of him in the succession had left Kili reckless and dismissive of the thought that he could ever take the throne.

Voices filter down from the higher levels, and Kili knows they will be looking for him again. His wanderings worry the dwarves of the Company. He knows they think he is unstable, and catches the older dwarves watching him when he’s eating or sitting alone. They try to get him to talk, but they never mention Thorin or Fili, as if those names will provoke a response in him or a display of anger. Kili smiles to himself, a half-crazed grin. As if it were that easy to distract him. He talks, but he can never bring himself to say much. He reads the documents people give him, takes the newly forged seal of the King they give him and presses it into the red wax on the letters they hand him. He plays the King, just as he and Fili did as children in the Blue Mountains. There has been no official coronation yet, and Kili half wonders if they are biding their time to see if there is an alternative. A King who doesn’t wake in the night screaming as he relives the death of his brother again and again. He hardly cares if they are. They deserved better than a half-crazed adolescent who can barely look at his bow anymore.

He stands as the voices get closer, hugging himself and slowly walking towards the sound. It’s no use hiding anymore. Balin knows these halls like the back of his hand, despite having spent so long away from them. He can hear the older dwarf now, mumbling softly to a figure that moves through the halls almost silently and appears to cast a soft light on the smooth stones. A different voice carries through the passages and falls on his ears. A soft, deep, musical voice. Suddenly Kili wants to run, but he holds his ground. A King doesn't run, even if faced with the one living being that scares him more than anything else. He’s managed to avoid the elf-maid since the battle, keeping to his room and these secluded corridors. He never thought she’d come this far underground - he’d been told elves hated Dwarven halls and the cold stone of their homes. It seemed he was wrong. She looks the same as he remembers her as she steps into the light. How could that be true, though? Nothing is the same, everything is different and dark in Kili’s new world. How then, is she still made of starlight? Kili knew she had been at his sickbed, that soft, lilting voice bringing him back from the darkness that had threatened to swallow him. Her voice was the only thing that kept him from succumbing to the darkness and following Fili’s laughter.

Tauriel stops short as her sharp eyes finally fall on Kili’s small form. She swallows down her shock at how much he’s changed, eyes searching his pale face. Her hands itch to just reach out and hold him, but she forces herself to remain still for the sake of his pride. Balin gently touches her back, retreating back into the darkness and up the stairs to give them privacy. Tauriel’s eyes take in Kili’s form - was he always this small? She remembered the day, not so long ago, where she’d remarked to Legolas that Kili was tall for a dwarf. Here in the barely lit corridor he looks as small as a child. Her hands tremble as she gives in to the urge to reach for him, one palm resting on his stubbled cheek. His eyes flicker up to meet hers, as if daring her to say something. His gaze is wary, although there’s something else there too. A desperation that almost breaks her into pieces. Neither of them know how it happens, but somehow they’re sinking to the hard floor as Kili sobs into her shoulder and she’s the only thing keeping him from just collapsing onto the stone. Tauriel bites her lip hard to stop herself from losing it, needing more than anything to keep it together for him. Her arms hold him tight, as if she fears he might physically fall to pieces if she doesn't keep him in one solid piece. There are tears on her face and she can’t tell if they belong to her or Kili as he cries into her shoulder, rough stubble scraping her pale skin as he shakes in her arms. She doesn’t care, she thinks fiercely as she holds the King of Erebor in her arms and lets him fall apart. Tauriel realises she’s shaking too as she kneels, never letting go of the dark-haired dwarf and rocking him slowly. He’s clinging to her like a child, and pain surges through Tauriel as she remembers how young he really is. She finds herself whispering soft words, elvish nonsense mixed in with words of comfort. She’s never felt this protective of any living thing before, and she knows that if anyone tried to come near Kili at that moment she would rip them to pieces.

It’s a long time before Kili’s wracking sobs ease off, and Tauriel loses track of how long they kneel in the torchlight for. She doesn’t care, though. She knows Kili needs this, and if she was the one who could give him an outlet for his grief then she would do it over and over again. When he speaks, his voice is raspy and heavy with grief. “I couldn’t save them, Tauriel,” he whispers through his tears, tormented brown eyes lifting to hers as if he were searching for answers she didn’t have. “Why wasn’t I strong enough… I was supposed to be strong enough.” She closes her eyes briefly, trying to hide the pain crashing over her in waves at his words. “We were supposed to take back Erebor together, not like this… Tauriel,” Kili slumps into her arms again, but this time he is still. Tauriel can feel the absolute defeat and exhaustion in his small form, and she wonders if this might be worse than his desperate sobbing. “It should have been me,” he whispers. Her own tears must be apparent on her face now, and she can’t even bring herself to care. Kili is all that matters in her whole world, and she can’t believe she let him get to this point. She knew he needed solitude, but how could she have let him wander these halls, slowly losing his mind for so long. He was all she had thought about since the day of the battle, from the moment she called his name on the battlefield and heard him call back to hear, voice incredulous. Even as he lay there in her arms, life draining from him as she gently pushed dark, blood-matted hair from his face, he sounded like he could barely believe she was there. Tauriel would barely admit it, but she had never been more afraid in her long life than when. Even now, she lifts a hand and gently touches him, mapping out his face, convincing herself that he’s still here. Forcing down her own sobs, she clutches him tight. “Don’t say that,” she says, her voice harsh as she clutches his face and presses fierce kisses to his brow and hair. “Please, Kili, don’t say that.” Her voice is almost hysterical now as she meets his eyes, her face wet with tears and her lips tingling from kissing him so hard. “I thought… I thought you were dead when they took you down the mountain. I can’t lose you…” She cuts off quickly before she can tell him everything - how she fell to her knees over his body and screamed when they tried to take him away. Her kin barely look at her, even now, and she would not be surprised if she was the only elf in history to show such emotion at the sight of a dying dwarf. ”I called you and called you, tended to you until you awoke and even then I only left your side because Thranduil threatened to have me imprisoned if I didn’t follow his orders and return to the Elven camp.”

Tauriel doesn’t know how or when they shifted, but she realises that they’re tangled together on the ground, facing each other and desperately holding tightly. She feels as if any second Kili’s going to run from her again and hide where she can’t find her, and she’ll be damned if that’s going to happen. Kili just holds her, unable to even feel the cold from the stone beneath them leeching into his bones. Tauriel is warmth, she’s an anchor, and by the stars - he’s never letting her go. It seems like a lifetime ago when he was in another place, dying from another wound, and he thought he’d forgotten that night. But lying on the floor in the ancient halls of his people, the memory hits him hard as if the Goblin blade is once again landing on his temple.

He’s cold - so cold, yet the poison from the Morgul-blade makes him shake and sweat. It’s all darkness and shadows, screams surround him, laughing at him and calling him into a hellish world where everything seems sucked into the void above. Then, blessedly, a light pierces the world. He feels warmth, a soft touch, and he believes for a sudden second that he’s safe in a well-lit hut. He hears his brother’s voice. then a second one. The most beautiful voice he’s ever heard. Slowly the pain leaves him, and he’s babbling to himself about the voice. She couldn’t be her, in truth, could she? No, he was a fool. A lovesick Dwarf boy dreaming about a beautiful Elvish maiden. Still, he asks himself. “Do you think she could have loved me?

 

With a sharp breath he jolts back into reality, eyes flying up to Tauriel’s face as incredulous realisation washes over him. He hides it as quick as it crosses his face, though. He had been dreaming, he must have. He was a young dwarf, and he didn't know much... but he knew deep in his aching heart that a beautiful, strong elf captain would never love a stupid dwarf like himself. She had always been too far above him. Suddenly Kili’s bones feel an ache of exhaustion unlike anything he has ever felt, and he clings to Tauriel with the last shred of his remaining strength. She just holds him back, hushing him, although neither of them are speaking. It’s a long time before she presses a soft kiss to his coarse hair, realising the Dwarven king has fallen asleep in her arms. Even in sleep, Kili looks tortured. Faint wrinkles marr his young face, Tauriel’s sure they weren’t there before. She stands, lifting the dwarf in one smooth motion and cradling him in her arms. He’s light, skinnier than she remembers him being in Laketown and much smaller than he was on the battlefield.

She makes her way back up through the cavernous halls, the enormity of Erebor, easily remembering the way Balin bought her through the passages. It’s the old dwarf himself waiting at the top of the staircases, his eyes on a stone carving in one of the walls. He glances down at Kili’s sleeping form, but does not say a word. Tauriel instantly liked this old man, and she has never regretted her decision. Balin looks down at his sleeping King with sadness in his eyes. “Thorin was the closest thing he had to a father,” he says, voice deep as he stares down. “His father… his and Fili’s… he died on the battlefield when Kili was no more than a babe. Thorin never really knew how to be a father.” Balin sighed, turning back to glance at the carved wall. “He did his best with those two, though. They loved him.”

Tauriel notices the old dwarves eyes are glistening with tears.


End file.
